Friday 9 December 2022

How To Link Time Travel To A Future History

Olaf Stapledon's mental time travellers observe history and one inspires the author of Last and First Men who, however, distorts most of the information that he receives.

Robert Heinlein had the right idea but did it wrong. An immortal character who was born in the early twentieth century and who has lived through the future history time travels to his birth era to experience it from a different perspective.

Isaac Asimov's idea is that some time travellers change history to bring about his Galactic Empire.

The Maurai Federation, the setting of a future history by Poul Anderson, is one of the periods visited by the mutant time travellers in Anderson's There Will Be Time.

These are four different ways to link time travel to a future history. 

I would like to see someone write:

a historical novel;
a futuristic sf novel;
a time travel novel that reveals that some of the historical characters were from the future.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Because of my rapid loss of interest in Asimov after 1975, I missed that bit about him using time travelers who caused the rise of the Galactic Empire.

Intriguing, your suggestion that time travelers from the future were also some of the historical characters seen in the past. It reminds me of the book Stirling is writing using time travelers stranded in Antonine Rome.

Ad astra! Sean